Martyr
The book opens with a man being attacked by a large creature in a circular chamber. He manages to gain the upper hand briefly by diving between its arms as it charges and tearing open the creature's abdomen. However, the creature incapacitates him, then picks him up and tears him in half, killing him. The book then shifts to a small town named Chicxulub where a young boy named Chava (nickname for Salvador) who couldn't sleep, walks along the beach to discover a humanoid creature. The creature was emitting a toxic gas and was growing bigger so the boy decided to head back to town and tell some people. He brings some people back including his mother and they all see with horrific shock the creature on the beach. His mother tells Chava to get the old 'bruja' (Spanish for witch). He gets her and brings her back to the beach and once there the bruja does a ritual dance with everyone there following suit. After the dance the bruja ''sets a log on fire and tells Chava to burn the creature as it was getting bigger. She also tells him the meaning of the name to the town Chicxulub - "devil's tail." He burns the creature and it dies. Not long after, he walks the ''bruja home but loses track of her due to hearing whispers and seeing things. He notices she's gone and heads to her house to see if she went back there by herself. Once there, he walks in and notices blood all over the walls with strange symbols, and finds her dead on her bed with a slit throat that was apparently self-inflicted. He realized she has been dead for quite some time and he runs out of her house. The book then shifts to Michael Altman, a geophysicist, who is working in a facility located in Chicxulub. He along with his partner James Field, discover a gravitational anomaly coming from the center of the crater in Chicxulub. For days they tried to figure out exactly what caused the anomaly but to no avail. Altman wouldn't give up so easily like Field so he decided to contact people around town about the crater. One day, he received a call from a mysterious man and he told Altman to meet him at a bar at 8pm that night. Altman thought it was a prank and decided to go home instead. When he arrived home, he talked with his girlfriend, Ada Chavez, who was an Anthropologist working in Chicxulub, and told her about his day. She told him of all the weird things going on at her workplace. How people around town talked about a folklore called "tail of the devil" that lies in the center of the crater and how reluctant people were when she questioned more about it. She also said that this town Chicxulub means "devil's tail." He realized there's something more to the crater than just an anomaly. He decided to meet the mysterious man at the bar to hopefully get some answers. Once there, a man named Charles Hammond introduced himself. He told Altman that he was a freelance worker in installations and was recently hired at DredgerCorp, a resource retrieval corporation. He said DredgerCorp recently got there to Chicxulub under the radar and while he was working there, he discovered a pulse exactly at the same location of Altman's anomaly. At the center of the crater. He thinks it may be a signal. He asked around to other corporations to see if they were receiving this strange "pulse signal" and they were. He told DredgerCorp and they asked Hammond if he told anyone. He realized that something bigger was going on with DredgerCorp and this "pulse signal." Hammond said he doesn't think that whatever's at the center of the crater is man-made. Altman asked why Hammond came to him. He said because he was asking questions when no one else would. He thinks everyone has been bought except for Altman. After their conversation, Altman leaves and Hammond stays awhile longer drinking, then leaves the bar when he noticed how late it was. While walking the streets he gets a strong headache and keeps hearing whispers. He starts to lose it a little when he is suddenly approached by three men who want to take him in for questioning. He thinks they are going to kill him for talking so he runs. The three men catch up to him and surround him. Hammond pulls out a pocket knife and cuts one of them on the wrist. The whispers and headaches were getting worse and in a state of madness, Hammond slits his own throat. The three men were surprised by this and restated that all they wanted to do was take him in for questioning. DredgerCorp sends a sub down to investigate the site of the anomaly. There, they dig down, and the two on the crew, Hennessy and Dantec, become increasingly agitated with severe headaches. Hennessy hallucinates his dead brother, Shane. Shane (or rather the Black Marker speaking through him), is severely hurt and explodes in a gory manner when a sample of the marker is extracted by Dantec with the core extractor. Hysterical to the point of insanity, Hennessy cracks, and murders Dantec (despite him being light built and the latter a seasoned veteran of the moon wars). He proceeds to wipe alien symbols correspondent with the Marker, in the latter's blood, all over the interior of the sub. Since he is insane, he doesn't realize he is running out of oxygen. He runs out of space, so he paints his own naked body with the symbols (see the cover art for a representation). He makes a vidlog in this state, and broadcasts it from Chicxulub on various different frequencies, such that many members of the public receive bits of it despite heavy static interference, including scientists. Hennessy then dies of oxygen starvation and the sub seems to be a loss. With the bits of the vidlog public, scientists piece them together. Since he is very curious and always blows the whistle on people, Altman distributes a compiled version of the video under an alias so that DredgerCorp lackeys will not be able to get to him over it. Worse for DredgerCorp, Altman titles the compiled vidlog to expose the corporation, specifically saying that the vidlog came from a sub digging in the center of the crater. Feeling exposed, DredgerCorp decides the only way to cover up this problem is by doing a press conference that twists the official events to avoid too much damage to their interests, and not revealing the Marker, saying instead that Hennessy had just gone insane while taking the sub on a "test run". When he hears this, Altman at first believes the events, then decides it isn't good enough and suspects more was going on. Knowing it's too big for them now, DredgerCorp call in the military to take over the salvage operation and get the artifact out for examination. Just as he resigns from the extremely stressful affair, Tanner, who had largely managed DredgerCorp's activities and the press conference, slits his own throat while hallucinating that he is actually cutting an aperture to share oxygen, from his space suit, with the deceased Dantec, in a vacuum (despite that sounding like folly even if the circumstances were real) during the moon wars. The police question Altman over the death of Hammond. Later, Ada and Chava show him the remains of the dead creature on the beach, and he is very curious. Altman later goes a little too far by requesting a full scientific investigation of the crater. With the bold idea to request a grant for a full scientific study of the anomaly within the crater, Altman draws the unwanted attention of DredgerCorp and military lackeys (these two were apparently in a coalition from the start), who come to find out how much he knows. It turns out that Altman knows a little too much for their liking, but they (narrowly) decide he will do as a member of their team, and take him to the floating research complex over the crater, during which course he is reunited with Ada and his fellow Chicxulub scientists. It turns out that a massive research team has been assembled with just about a scientist from every corner imaginable there (he is the geophysicists and Ada the anthropologist in the team). Altman befriends the man who is to pilot the recovery vehicle to go and get the sunken sub, whose name is Hendricks. His copilot is a drunk called Moresby. Moresby is incompetent and turns out drunk for an inspection, somehow ending up breaking his neck shortly thereafter. Altman had been accompanying Hendricks as a copilot and had got used to piloting. Markoff, the military man behind the whole military research project, decides it's okay for Altman to be the pilot of the sub during recover efforts. Despite Altman clearing Hendricks as perfectly mentally stable, so they are quite confident the misfortune of the previous sub will not repeat, Hendricks cracks and tries to kill Altman. Altman manages to recover the sunken sub with the gory mess of Hennessy and Dantec in it, back to the surface, but several even more interesting things happen. He vidlogs a necromorph fish, tearing apart an ordinary fish. He takes the piece of the Marker contained in the core sampler, for himself. He steals a piece of pinkish matter (Corruption) from the side of the sub. Altman's fellow scientists examine the pink matter he recovered and Altman privately examines the piece of the Marker, unable to identify the rock or understand what kind of technology could manipulate this sort of matter in this way. Hendricks is confined in the sickbay and kills a nurse before being shot dead, himself. This disturbs Altman, who had developed a friendship with him. Altman works his way through several more copilots during runs with the sub, some of whom try to kill him, and others he has better luck with, such as the psychologist Stevens. The strength of the Marker's signal seems to directly correlate with the timing of the madness kicking in, and Altman believes this means the Marker has mind-control properties. Altman seems the most suitable pilot (much to Markoff's intrigue) because of his resistance to the effects of the Marker madness, probably brought on by his skeptical attitudes and very calm demeanor. Despite another close call in the sub, in which he has to kill a man who was trying to open the hatch to let his deceased father's ghost in, Altman manages to assist in getting the artifact itself up to the research facility, although Markoff's subs do the job, mainly. A cult of religious momentum had already started to develop around the Marker, which Altman was very skeptical and quite fearful of. He is even more freaked out when they describe him as their prophet because he has "seen it". When it has been brought up, the "believers" continue to regard him in this way. Although Altman is intrigued by the Marker, he certainly doesn't adore it in the way the believers (his girlfriend among them) do. People respond (even among the believers themselves) in various different ways to the Marker. Some think they need to study it to discover its secrets, seeing it as somehow made for the elevation of mankind. Others have a much less coherent attitude to it, simply saying it "loves" them and they love it, in truly fanatically religious illogic. His fellow researcher, Field, whom Altman had never liked anyway, seems an even more distasteful person to Altman, now that he regards Altman as his "reluctant prophet". Confrontation arises between the believers and the military personnel, leading to Field getting shot in the foot by Krax (one of Markoff's lackeys), and then Krax shooting their beloved Marker and threatening to continue doing so, to try and subdue the believers. His strategy works. Using his prophetic authority over the believers to pull some strings, Altman gets a look at the Marker and vidlogs it, just before he is to be removed from the team and sent back to a mainland Chicxulub facility where Ada already is. He is sent away to the land facility to be confined so that they (the military) can shut him up. However, when the guards hallucinate and can't keep him getting away, he and Ada get away and head off to the North American Sector, where Altman declares the military to be guilty of a cover-up of the genuine proof of alien life. With audiences all around the world fascinated by his claims, many in awe, others skeptical, of the vidlog showing an immense alien artifact under study, Markoff is enraged and wants to "stamp out" the threat of Altman right away. Markoff goes and gets Altman, bringing him back to the facility, where Altman is separated from Ada and tortured at the hands of Krax (who quite possibly kills Ada at this time but doesn't tell Altman, since the possibility she is alive is still a useful way of manipulating him). Altman's torture is interrupted by Stevens, who gets Altman to come and calm the believers down, but Altman just uses this time to investigate more about the Marker and get another look at it, trying to "fix" it by putting the piece back in. Showalter, a German scientist present, tells him that the Marker is like the nautilus in structure: although highly complex, it operates just fine as long as a "compartment" is still active. It turns out that Stevens is a believer and this is the reason he is sympathetic to Altman. They begin to theorize that the Marker is supposed to bring eternal life. It seems inevitable that it is either the ultimate source of hope for humankind or will spell absolute doom and extinction, since it is so immensely powerful and significant. As the tireless research goes on at the facility, a scientist named Guthe hallucinates his grandmother and, exasperated and delirious, injects himself with a genetically unique fluid he had just manufactured using the apparent DNA encoded in the structure of the Black Marker. His arm begins to swell and transform. His grandmother's ghost commands him to get into the "dead space" surrounding the Marker to prevent the "Convergence" (first contact with alien life) going further and spelling doom for mankind. However, ignorant lackeys arrive and Krax shoots Guthe in the head. A dead body is now being taken away on a stretcher, out of the dead space, and is infected. Under the sheet, it transforms into an infector. Two others are immediately infected as Field watches the feed in horror. Soon, the whole facility is the scene of a carnage unlike anything ever seen before. Krax and Markoff are no longer Altman's number one concern. The lower levels are flooded with necromorphs. Although most personnel die, Harmon is okay as he remains in the dead space under the continued signal of the Marker. Markoff, Krax and a few lackeys evacuate, and Altman gets away by cutting first and asking questions later, on his own, on a boat, despite nearly every one of his fellow scientists ending up dead (including Field whose head is strangled off). Altman gets ashore and goes into the mainland facility (presumably to find Ada and alert the mainland facility of the disaster on the floating research center, since he assumes the command structure has failed in the disaster and Markoff is probably dead). He is forced to use his plasma cutter to cut a security man's arm off when the facility's personnel turn out to be corrupt lackeys of Markoff who want to take him away. Altman is called by the Marker which creates a hallucination of Ada. He now knows she is dead because the Marker only creates illusions of the dead. With nothing else to live for, and at the behest of Chava who comes to his aid, Chava brings Altman to a hidden cache with various weapons and life-threatening tools. Of all the weapons in the cache, Altman takes a chainsaw (much to Chava's confusion), and goes back to the floating facility over the crater. There, he will try to figure out what the Marker wants and/or how to contain the infection that has broken out, before mankind is doomed. At the floating facility, Altman manages to contact Harman and has to swim through the center of the floating complex to get through underwater doors to avoid massive numbers of Necromorphs, to reach the Marker safely. He encounters various Necromorphs along the way to the Marker, including something described like a Brute and others described like giant spiders with detachable heads (somewhat like the head that comes from a Divider), as well as something called the "Creeper" which he used a makeshift flamethrower to slow down during his prior escape from the facility. This "Creeper" is described as continuously growing and invincible, and is possibly the seedling of a "Hive Mind" as only one such creature appears to be in the facility. Harman meets up with and follows behind Altman like a slave, repeatedly saying "Altman be praised" (much to the latter's distaste) while Altman tries to figure out what the Marker is all about. Altman gathers as much research about the Marker as he can and, realizing it is a threat, attempts to sink it and destroy the facility. This distresses Harman, but he doesn't do anything to harm Altman. Altman succeeds in sinking the artifact and the billion-dollar facility, drowning the infection and releasing the Marker away. It is uncertain what effect this had as the Necromorphs seem just as much of a threat to marine life as to land life; however, it could be that the Necromorphs were trapped by the destroyed facility, or that land life turned into Necromorphs cannot function underwater due to them being specifically designed to operate on land (the more likely of the two theories). Either way, the Marker would still not have been returned to its original position (unless it happened through sheer luck), leaving one loose end that may possibly be tied up in another entry into the Dead Space universe. Whatever happened in these respects, it is clear that Harman then assaulted Altman and rendered him unconscious. He wakes up under a gloating Markoff, who reveals that he is a believer. He reveals that Krax killed Ada, that Krax is also dead and transformed into a creature, and that Altman must fight this creature armed only with a spoon, while he opens a bottle of champagne. Furthermore, he reveals his dark plan to found a formal religion in Altman's name, which will ready mankind for its ultimate evolution, when a "new" Marker has been made, based on the other one, but is not "broken" (creating monsters rather than granting eternal life) next time, as the previous one was. Markoff says that the Marker is divine because it brings dead flesh back to life, and that it just needs to be done properly because it didn't happen right the first time. He and his inner circle seem convinced that the Marker started all evolution on Earth and is the key to conquering death. A devastated Altman, informed of his girlfriend's death and aware of all the infamy that will be done in his name after his death, suffers from the aforementioned humiliating execution, and Unitology is born of the fabricated larger-than-life accounts about Altman. Unitology's story of Altman as a saint, a martyr and the founder of their religion, all throughout the Dead Space universe, is merely the media spin birthed by Markoff and his fellow conspirators for their own corrupt intentions. Category:Dead Space Category:Horror Category:Novel